Caustic
by santsi
Summary: Edna Hyde builds a wall- A mother's love in a nutshell.


**(A/N): Hey readers. I've been gone for a while. Personal stuff. But I've been reading more than I have since I was thirteen and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm pretty sure it's not. Oh well. Provides alot of inspiration atleast. This piece was inspired by an author writing for a different fandom. She's wonderful. The fic is called "Blindsided". I promise I've got a light hearted fic coming up soon. Until then, please enjoy and review! Thanks guys!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own T7S.**

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><p>'Toddler' was a concept Edna Hyde could neither fathom nor accept.<p>

Steven's chubby legs would stagger around the stagnant mess of a house- digging through old beer bottles and crushed cans. Never opting to play with his second hand toys, only trash. 'Just like his father', Edna thinks bitterly, tapping what's left of her blow onto the tiny mirror. Steven would bring her a can or a cigarette butt. (Or really anything a toddler wasn't supposed to be near-let alone hold.) He would flash a toothy grin that she _feels_ should melt her heart. Instead she sighs and peels the object from thick sticky fingers and gives him a stern 'no' before sending him on his way.

She tries to ignore the writhing ache in her gut. The ache that knows it's no coincidence her brings her garbage with hope in his eyes.

_(Like mother like son.)_

When it's time for bed he screams and screams and _screams_. Edna pulls at her hair and frantically digs through her purse searching for one last piece of a pill because she doesn't want to feel it- and it's coming.

'They don't call it pain medicine for no reason', she decides after his cries die down in her head.

She loves him. And love is pain. Or at least, that's all Edna has known since the beginning. She's not sure where the beginning started she just knows 'I love you' has always been followed by some terrible experience that left her feeling burning and wrong and terrified. Her heart was hurting; always. Steven was no different.

She loves him the most.

When he was born she was terrified. She heard there would be an instant bond, some holy connection a mother feels when she holds her newborn for the first time. That all doubts dissolve in that one defining moment. Not for Edna, she felt fear. Crippling, numbing fear.

Fear because he was here now. Tangible; blood and bones and beating pulse. Skin and hair and her own eyes. One pristine velvet fist wrapped around one smoke stained finger.

Here was _life_ and life was never permanent. It was fragile- easily broken. And all Edna had done her whole life was _break_.

She was afraid because she felt her heart burst and cave in and shatter all at once.

He was beautiful.

Now he clings onto her for dear life. He follows her around; eyebrows furrowed, bottom lip jutted out, blubbering nonsense, jelly roll arms reaching up. Edna digs through the foul refrigerator for something to feed him. (Old milk, Empty orange juice carton, moldy leftovers, case of beer.)

She can't look him in the eye anymore.

Every chance she gets she pawns him off on her mother, neighbors, anyone who can take him so she can just _breathe_. Because love is suffocating and Edna is selfish and chokes beneath Steven's hopeful smile.

When he's gone she's cries and she cries and she cries. The house is empty and full of clutter. Her throat burns with chalky grit. She wishes for one savory moment she was half the mother she knows he needs. And every time he screams and twists and kicks as toddlers do she hates Bud a little bit more.

Once upon a time she thriving in her destruction. Going nowhere fast. Bourbon was her lover, Scotch was her friend, all other were expendable and she was okay with that disgusting lonesome truth. She accepted her sadness, accepted her sickness. After all she had been sick since the beginning. And why try to fix something that was never broken in the first place?

But then Bud came along. Before she knew it her belly was swollen with life she didn't understand; with no way to do it alone and there was no way he would stay. (The white, hot, searing, truth.)

The back door to the clinic was dingy to say the least. She placed her hand on the door knob and felt herself cracking beneath the weight of the silence. Late October proved to be colder than usual. Or maybe that was just the bone-chilling indifference. Bud caught her just before she stepped in. With a sweaty palm on her shoulder and a yellow smile, he offered her sweet promises of family and love.

(What 'love' was to her at this point she doesn't remember.)

But that didn't last and she was left beaten, bruised and forgotten. Bourbon never tasted so sweet. Even as Steven cried in the room next to her.

It became harder to look at Steven every time Bud left. Guilt is a funny thing. It festers. Quietly. Builds calluses from the inside. It's not that she avoids his unconditionally loving blue orbs because she resents him. It's because she resents herself for bringing this innocent child into her wreck of a life. When she knew, driving to that hole-in-the-wall clinic, he didn't deserve this wreck. This child would one day be a man. He would have a future he had no choice in. He would be a victim of her circumstance, and that wasn't fair.

She prays every night to a God she doesn't believe in that love doesn't find him in the bottom of a warm bottle of bourbon.

(_Like mother like son.)_

Edna loves Steven. She loves him, so she doesn't look at him. She loves him, so she stays away as much as possible. She loves him, so she leaves him be. She loves him the best way she knows how- by building a wall. So he doesn't love her.

_Because love is pain, and her son deserves better._


End file.
